“From Nigeria to Norway, the next generation is beginning to take ownership of the system of scholarly communication which they will inherit,” said Nick Shockey, founding Director of the Right to Research Coalition. “OpenCon 2014 will support and accelerate this rapidly growing movement of students and early career researchers advocating for openness in research literature, education, and data.

The first event of its kind, OpenCon 2014 builds on the success of the Berlin 11 Satellite Conference for Students and Early Stage Researchers, which brought together more than 70 participants from 35 countries to engage on Open Access to scientific and scholarly research. The interest, energy, and passion from the student and researcher participants and the Open Access movement leaders who attended made a clear case for expanding the event in size and duration, and to broaden the scope to related areas of the Openness movement.”

Last year, I was also part of the organizing committee for the event that this has grown from – the Berlin 11 Satellite conference:

The Berlin 11 Satellite Conference was really exciting but only a 1-day event before the ‘main’ Berlin 11 event – an assemblage of students and ECR’s from literally all over the world (attending with generous full funding support), including representatives from (in no particular order) China, India, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Tanzania, Tasmania(!), Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Columbia, FYR Macedonia, Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Holland, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, Canada, the US, the UK… So don’t worry about where you are in the world – as long as you’re a student or ECR you’ll be eligible to apply for OpenCon 2014 (places are limited though!).

As a reminder, at the event last year we had Jack Andraka and Mike Taylor amongst the guest speakers. It was such a comprehensive success that it’s been expanded into a full 3-day event this year, expanding scope too, to include Open Data and OER, not just OA (they’re all obviously inter-related problems; better to tackle the integrated set of problems rather than aspects in isolation!).

Applications for OpenCon 2014 will open in August. For more information about the conference and to sign up for updates, visit www.opencon.net

I promise you this – it’s going to be BIG and I’m stoked to be part of an international organizing committee helping to make this happen.

OpenCon 2014 is also looking for additional sponsorship, particularly for Travel Scholarships to ensure global representation at this meeting, so if you have a marketing budget to spend, or are feeling generous please do have a look at the sponsorship opportunities.